Okay, here’s my blog post, just like you asked. It’s about that Mississippi State football Dak Prescott stuff. Let’s dive in:
Alright folks, gather ’round! Today I’m gonna walk you through how I messed around with some Mississippi State football data, focusing on Dak Prescott’s time there. It was a fun little project, and I figured I’d share the whole shebang.
First off, I had to grab the data. I spent a good chunk of time digging through old sports stats websites. You know, the kinda places that look like they haven’t been updated since the early 2000s. I scraped what I could, mostly box scores and season summaries. It was messy, let me tell ya. Different sites had different formats, some were PDFs, some were just badly formatted tables.
Then came the fun part: cleaning! Oh man, cleaning data is never fun, is it? I threw everything into a spreadsheet. I had to correct typos, standardize the date formats, and fill in missing info where I could find it from other sources. This took FOREVER. Think about things like making sure “Dak Prescott” wasn’t sometimes “D. Prescott” or “Prescott, Dak.” Consistency is key, people!
Next, I started massaging the data. I wanted to calculate some basic stats: completion percentage, yards per attempt, all that jazz. I used some simple formulas in the spreadsheet to do it. Nothing fancy, just good ol’ fashioned arithmetic. I also created some new columns, like “game result” (win or loss) and “opponent rank” (if I could find it).
- Completion percentage
- Yards per attempt
- Game results
Once I had the cleaned and massaged data, it was time to visualize it. I exported the data to a tool that could make some charts. I tried a bunch of different chart types: line graphs to show his passing yards over time, bar charts to compare his stats against different opponents.
The goal was to see if I could spot any trends.
Here’s where it got interesting. I started looking for patterns. Did Dak perform better against ranked opponents? Did his completion percentage improve each year? Stuff like that. I noticed that his passing yards generally increased year after year, which isn’t a shock, but it was cool to see it visually. I also found that his performance against top-10 teams was pretty consistent – he didn’t necessarily light them up, but he also didn’t completely fall apart.
I messed around with different ways of slicing and dicing the data. I grouped games by season, by opponent type (conference vs. non-conference), and even by weather conditions (if I could find that info!).
Finally, I put everything together into a little presentation. Nothing too formal, just a few charts and some bullet points highlighting my key findings. It was a fun way to revisit Dak’s college career and see how he developed over time.
It was a fun little data dive, and it goes to show you don’t need to be a data scientist to get some cool insights. All you need is some data, a spreadsheet, and a willingness to get your hands dirty!
